The Six IIM Alumni Report 2013 - Part Three - Stats for Consulting & Banking

In part three, we examine the glamour domains that attract the best in the country towards a MBA. On our helpline Eklavya, these are the most asked questions - "Is my profile fit for Front-end IB?", "What can I do to ensure I get into Strategy Consulting and only in the 'Big 4' ?" ,"Please suggest best colleges in India to do Consulting (not IT Consulting)" etc.

You can read last year's report here on Consulting. Read last year's report on Banking here .

Before we release the data, readers would do well to consider the following points in their own analysis:

1) Consider the number of graduating batches when you look at the numbers. IIM A and IIM C both have had over 45 batches of students who have graduated for the PGP programme. For IIM B that number is 38. At IIM L 27 batches have graduated and at IIM K 15. IIM I is the youngest of the lot with 14 graduating batches. Also consider the fact that up to 2006-07 batch sizes at most of these IIMs were less than 200.

2) The numbers below include the Executive PGP programme graduates and other courses offered by the IIMs in the recent times.

3) A lot of professionals within IT Consulting especially with less than 5 year work experience, do not clearly mention their domains on their linkedin profile. Our view is that the % of IT Consultants is more than what data suggests. We have consciously left out IT Consulting companies from the list. Despite that, almost 30% of the consultants in the list below claim to be operating in that space. Most of them are at Accenture, Deloitte and IBM. These companies have Strategy/Management consulting units too.

4) The numbers below includes all professionals who are alumni and even those with no dates in their profile.

Let's look at Consulting first.

1) The alumni numbers suggest that the best 5 campuses for Management/Strategy Consulting are IIM A, IIM B, IIM C, (in no particular order) followed by ISB Hyderabad in 4th position and by IIM Lucknow in 5th position. More on ISB in the non-IIM top business schools report to be released later in the week.

2) IIM K is the weakest among the old IIMs in the Strategy/Management Consulting domain (JBIMS is the weakest among top schools). IIM Indore is marginally better. However, strength in IT Consulting ensured that traditionally more consultants were churned out by IIM K.

3) Although not at par with IIM ABC as in the case of FMCG, IIM Lucknow numbers are impressive especially at Mckinsey and BCG.

4) Accenture, Deloitte and IBM account for over 50% of the Consultants in this list above.

The table below talks about alumni stats in the Global MNC banks. The numbers below are a decent indicators but not conclusive to make definite observations. We suggest you take the numbers below with a pinch of salt for the following reasons:

1) It includes numbers from various back office subsidiaries of these banks. On LinkedIn, companies are not listed separately even though they different entities. For e.g. Citi numbers include Citi Financial Services, Citi India and Citibank, Bank of America Merrill Lynch numbers include Bank of America Continuum, Morgan Stanley numbers include Morgan Stanley Advantage Services etc.

2) It includes a lot of people in IT, Support and operations and have little to do with hardcore banking. Most of these professionals classify themselves as bankers on linkedIn. Now you could ask how we know that. We painfully went through profiles trying to dissect and understand. It was futile to classify functions as we did above in Consulting.

Some observations :

1) Goldman Sachs is to IIM Indore what P&G is to IIM K in the battle between the twins. However, the situation is likely to balance as Goldman Sachs has recruited for the last 3 years both for Finals and Summers at IIM Indore. MDI Gurgaon has a very impressive number of alumni at Goldman Sachs (better than IIM K and I).

Overall, the number of alumni from IIM I and IIM K at MNC banks is lower than at SPJIMR and JBIMS. However, the rate of progress at these two campuses is the most impressive in the country bettered only by ISB.

2) IIM Calcutta's dominance in finance is clear. At UBS, RBS, HSBC and American Express the leads seems more definitive.

3) Standard Chartered Bank, Citi and HSBC have been and will always be the most important foreign banks with regards to number of graduates getting placed.

4) The number of J.P.Morgan alumni is relatively lower at IIM Lucknow. We believe it could be due to a refusal to accept middle office jobs that are offered at IIM K and IIM I.

5) We hope to see a fresh twist to this story next year as the RBI is expected to issue new banking licenses soon. Although the new banks will be Indian, we expect this development to affect the numbers here in a substantial way. It may also mean more hiring for the Class of 2014 :-)

From tomorrow, we will start releasing numbers for other top schools in India - ISB,XLRI,FMS,SPJIMR and JBIMS.